Mike,
You should really consider purchasing a book or two on XSLT. This type of a
question can easily be answered there. Michael Kay's XSLT or Jeni
Tennison's Learning XSLT are great references. In addition, please look
through http://www.dpawson.co.uk/. Jeni also has a nice website that has a
broad introduction to some of the questions you'll probably come up with:
http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/. Finally, I think you should take a look
at the <xsl:if> and <xsl:choose><xsl: when/><xsl:otherwise/></xsl:choose>
elements. I believe you can get away with using the <if> element, but you
may have other cases. The choose/when/otherwise acts in a similar manner to
the if-then-else statements in c.
I made the assumption that you have an XSLT processor capable of handling
version 1.1 of XSLT. In addition, I made the assumption that you did not
want a box to appear at all unless the current node contained the
"header_notes" element. I've also included a full stylesheet with a variety
of different elements from within the XSLT language to give you and idea of
what you should be able to learn how to do from the references I mentioned
above.
<x:stylesheet version="1.1" xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<x:attribute-set name="box">
<x:attribute name="border">4</x:attribute>
<x:attribute name="width">100%</x:attribute>
<x:attribute name="valign">top</x:attribute>
<x:attribute name="cellpadding">5</x:attribute>
</x:attribute-set>
<x:attribute-set name="cell">
<x:attribute name="colspan">2</x:attribute>
<x:attribute name="width">100%</x:attribute>
<x:attribute name="valign">top</x:attribute>
</x:attribute-set>
<x:template match="/">
<!-- Do something here to get it into the right form -->
<x:if test="header_notes">
<x:call-template name="makeBox">
<x:with-param name="node" select="."/>
</x:call-template>
</x:if>
</x:template>
<x:template name="makeBox">
<x:param name="node" select="."/>
<x:element name="table" use-attribute-sets="box">
<x:element name="tr">
<x:element name="td" use-attribute-sets="cell">
<x:for-each select="$node/header_notes">
<x:value-of select="header_notes_text"/><x:element
name="br"/>
</x:for-each>
</x:element>
</x:element>
</x:element>
</x:template>
</x:stylesheet>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Rudolph" <mrudolph(_at_)gbp(_dot_)com>
To: <xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 10:54 AM
Subject: [xsl] HOW TO CHECK FOR EXISTENCE OF A NODE
Newbie here. I am looking for the proper element to evaluate the
existence
of a node in order to suppress the generation of an HTML display 'box' if
a
particular node does not exist. So, instead of producing a box with a
caption of 'HEADER NOTES' when there are no header notes, I would rather
not
produce the box at all to cut down on the clutter. Here is the code which
makes the box and displays any header_notes_text if it exists. For
example,
<TABLE BORDER="4" WIDTH="100%" VALIGN="TOP" CELLPADDING="5">
<TR>
<TD WIDTH="100%" VALIGN="TOP" COLSPAN="2">
<H4 ALIGN="LEFT">HEADER NOTES AREA</H4>
<xsl:for-each select="header_notes">
<xsl:value-of select="header_notes_text" /><BR/>
</xsl:for-each>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
I tried wrapping the above with xsl:template but got this error:
Keyword xsl:template may not be used here.
I have not had any ah-ha experiences yet, so I don't see the obvious.
----------
Mike Rudolph - EDI Coordinator
Green Bay Packaging Inc.
Phone: 920.433.5426
Fax: 920.438.5426
Email: mrudolph(_at_)gbp(_dot_)com
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list